Penn State has been out of the headlines for some time now. When did you decide to revisit the story?

I have followed the case closely and knew that there were many people who did not consider the Freeh Report to be the last word on the Sandusky affair. If you take Freeh at face value, Spanier is guilty. End of story. But the fact is that he has not yet stood trial or even had a trial date set, 18 months after being charged. Freeh’s report has been questioned by, among others, a former U.S. attorney general, Dick Thornburgh, who was hired by Joe Paterno’s family.

My initial interest in the story was: What is this guy’s life like? Here was Spanier — former president of a huge university, a leading figure in higher education — reduced to mostly staying inside, emailing with his lawyers and trying to somehow clear his name. That epic fall is what initially attracted my interest.

What interested you about Penn State’s reaction to the Sandusky scandal?

I was also struck, right from the beginning, by the $60 million fine that Penn State agreed to pay to the N.C.A.A. By agreeing to it, the university seemed to almost embrace blame for Sandusky and an alleged cover-up of his crimes. It was a plea of collective guilt that enraged many on Penn State’s faculty. What the story makes clear is that university leadership agreed to the “consent decree” with the N.C.A.A. in order to preserve its football program. It was bizarre. Here was a Penn State, accused of loving football too much, agreeing to a document crafted to save its football program.

You write that Spanier was willing, even eager, to talk. Has he spoken much publicly since the scandal?

He did give some interviews after the scandal broke, but these are his first public comments since he was criminally charged. He is clearly frustrated. Louis Freeh, the former F.B.I. director, has a very powerful platform, and his report was devastating to Spanier both personally and professionally. The criminal charges were lodged by the attorney general’s office in Pennsylvania, which has its own megaphone. I approached Spanier and asked if he would agree to let me spend time with him for a story, and he agreed, I think, because he wanted an opportunity to tell his story in a prominent publication and counter what he believes has been a prevailing narrative that is both inaccurate and unfair.

I’ve seen some of the reaction to the piece online, and it has been mixed. A great many people believe strongly that he is guilty and belongs in jail and don’t mind saying so, even in advance of a trial. Many seemed offended that we would even give voice to a man who, to them, is so clearly a criminal. A professor and former president of the faculty senate, whom I quote in the story, says, “Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe in the presumption of innocence.” I’m old-fashioned in the same way.

Were you surprised by Spanier’s family history or any other part of his personal story?

I was surprised by the sheer awfulness of his childhood, of having a father, a refugee from Nazi Germany, who regularly beat him for years and left facial damage that had to be surgically corrected in adulthood. A magazine piece leaves room for nuance and ambiguity. It’s one of the things I most enjoy about the form. I wrote about this part of Spanier’s childhood because what he described (and was confirmed to me by his sister, among others) would have to inform the whole rest of his life. But what specific bearing did Spanier’s own experience as a child victim have on his role in the Sandusky scandal? It’s something worth thinking about, but the story could not definitively answer it. I’m not sure anyone can, even Spanier.

The legal proceedings seem extremely tangled to me, too. To the best of your knowledge, what is the best-case outcome for Spanier? And the worst?

The best-case scenario is a judge rules on his petition to throw the charges out and he is a free man. Or, he could go to trial and be acquitted. Worst-case scenario: He is convicted of one or more of the felony charges he faces, which include child endangerment, perjury and conspiring to cover up Sandusky’s crimes, and faces jail time.

And, yes, the case is tangled. The trial judge in Dauphin County, Pa., has sat on pretrial motions for 18 months without ruling, which is what must first happen for Spanier to move toward trial. The lawyer who accompanied Spanier into a grand-jury room and prepped him for his testimony (Penn State’s general counsel at the time) later testified against him in front of a grand jury. The initial prosecutor in Spanier’s case left his job after clashing with the state’s new attorney general over a sting operation in Philadelphia that he led. Lastly, the supervising judge of the grand jury, also in a dispute with the attorney general, was relieved of his duties after he brandished a 10-inch Gurkha knife in front of a secretary in the attorney general’s office. He protested he was just showing it off for interest and had been tarred as “some wing nut with a Gurkha knife.”

I’m a native Pennsylvanian. It’s a colorful state, full of great characters, but maybe not the best place to be caught up in the court system and awaiting justice.

Bruce Grierson wrote this week’s cover story about Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who has conducted experiments that involve manipulating environments to turn back subjects’ perceptions of their own age.Read more…